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deathtocapslock
* Collin’s really acting like an obsessive stalker here. I wonder if that’s how Harry appeared to Draco in HBP?
* Ron’s malfunctioning wand actually sounds quite dangerous, but nobody thinks it might be a good idea to replace it. Although OTOH having a lax attitude towards safety seems to be one of the few things about the WW that seems consistent throughout the books (they’ll show it again when Percy tries to stop people using dangerous cauldrons), so maybe I should be thankful that it isn’t just one of these things that changes whenever the plot demands.
* I assume that JKR’s just forgotten to mention the try-outs that every Quidditch team apparently does each year.
* I’m just going to tune out while Harry recaps the rules of Quidditch for Collin.
* Everyone’s not bothering to pay attention to Wood’s new tactics. Remember kids, teamwork’s for suckers! You just do what you want to do!
* Wood is still upset over Gryffindor losing last year. Serves him right for being too thick to have a reserve Seeker, IMHO.
* Note how Wood’s first reaction upon seeing Collin is to jump to the conclusion that he’s a Slytherin spy. Not that he’s in any way biased against Slytherin, or anything like that.
* Remember chaps, looking like a troll = evil. Part-giant, OTOH, = misunderstood woobie. Even though trolls don’t really seem much worse than giants.
* There are no girls on the Slytherin team, just to remind everyone that they’re sexist, and therefore evil. JKR hates sexism, which is why she took care to include so many liberated, independent-minded women in the novels.
* Wood’s “spitting with rage” now. Christ, Oliver, calm down, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams could just play a friendly, or something.
* “Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s son?” says Fred, looking at Draco with dislike. Remember kids, it’s wrong to judge people based on their family.
* Is it possible to smirk so broadly that your eyes are “reduced to slits”, or is Draco actually grinning with happiness here?
* I don’t think that Malfoy did buy his way onto the team. For a start, Seeker is the most (i.e., only) important position in the game, and I don’t think that flying on better brooms would compensate for having an inferior Seeker. Secondly, he’s on the team for at least three years, when the Slytherins could easily have ditched him as soon as they’d got the brooms. They’d even have had a good excuse after losing that Quidditch match in “The Rogue Bludger”.
* Lucius seemed like quite a harsh, demanding father when we saw him in Borgin and Burke’s, IMHO, so the thought that he’s pleased daddy enough to make him buy new brooms for the team is probably making Draco grin even more.
* I bet he looks adorable in this scene.
* Now I can’t stop thinking of Lauren Lopez in A Very Potter Sequel. “Don’t worry, daddy, you’ll love me after this! I’ll catch that Snitch, mark my words!”
* Just thought it interesting to note that Malfoy wasn’t involved in the conversation until Ron brought him in. It’s not like he was strutting up and down, boasting about his new broom, or anything like that.
* Hermione’s the one who starts with the personal insults. Really, I think that the good [sic] guys are acting worse than the baddies here.
* If the theory that Draco’s really just happy because he’s finally made his daddy proud is right, then implying that he’d just bought his way onto the team is probably one of the most offensive things Hermione could say. Unsurprisingly, he responds with one of the most offensive things that he could say.
* Draco calls Hermione a “Mudblood”, despite the fact that she’s a Muggleborn, and therefore cannot be expected to know what it means, suggesting that either she’s upset him so much he’s not thinking straight, or that he wants to keep face in front of his teammates by responding to her insults, but at the same time doesn’t want to upset her. If the latter, it could be evidence for some kind of D/Hr ship.
* JKR seems to be expecting us to go “ZOMG Draco’s an evil racist!” suggesting that she’s forgotten why exactly it is that racism’s considered so wrong. I don’t think it’s just that you’re looking down on people for the way they were born – if it were, then jokes about stupid blondes would be considered as bad as jokes about stupid black people. Rather, it’s wrong because minorities often suffer from discrimination (and in many cases have suffered from it even more in the relatively recent past), and racist language helps to reinforce and normalise the prejudiced attitudes which lead to such discrimination. Because we haven’t really see people suffering from anti-Muggleborn prejudice, it’s hard to think of “Mudblood” as a particularly serious insult.
* This, BTW, is why I disagree with people who say things like “Rowling uses the Harry Potter books to teach children not to be racist.” If she were really doing that, she’d show how racism affects people’s lives (cf. To Kill a Mockingbird). What she’s actually doing is taking real racism and using it in lieu of actual worldbuilding and characterisation. We already know that racism is wrong, and we think Draco’s a bad person because his use of the term “Mudblood” is superficially similar to real-life examples of racism; we don’t learn about how racism is bad from its effects on HP characters, because it doesn’t really have any.
* Anyway, back to the actual story…
* Once again, the good guys are the first to use force. Why am I not surprised?
* I think it’s sweet the way Flint dives in front of Malfoy to stop him being attacked. The Slytherins often seem to look out for each other the most (see also Lucius patting Snape on the back when he’s first Sorted). Contrast this with the Gryffindors in PS, who refuse to speak to Harry, Hermione, Ron or Neville after they lose some House Points.
* What’s this, one of the good guys has suffered some negative consequences as a result of attacking someone else? Hold on while I go make a note of this in my diary.
* Again with the clothes! Lockhart’s wearing robes of “palest mauve” today. Harry’s really starting to look rather gay now; given JKR’s fondness for stereotypes (viz. the Finnegans) and inability to write a decent romance (chest monster!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find her way of showing homosexuality would be having someone spend all their time looking at their crush’s clothes.
* Note how Hagrid doesn’t remonstrate with Ron for trying to curse Malfoy. Clearly he’s a responsible adult and an excellent candidate for a prestigious teaching position.
* I know Hagrid doesn’t like Lockhart, but he really should know better than to undermine him like that in front of his pupils.
* So the jinx on DADA has been in place for what, forty or so years now? And people are only just starting to twig? I know wizards are slow learners, but really…
* Also, couldn’t Dumbledore find ways to either discover how Riddle jinxed the position and undo it somehow, or to get around it, such as hiring two teachers who each teach on alternate years or getting rid of DADA and replacing it with a class which is functionally indistinguishable but has a different name (“battle magic”, perhaps?).
* I think that this scene was one which the film actually did better than the books. Yes, having Hermione getting all upset may not have been fully logical, but it at least made Draco look like a hurtful bully rather than an eccentric crank. It also suggested that someone might have called Hermione that before, hinting at actual day-to-day anti-Muggleborn prejudice, which is more than the books ever managed to do.
* “Maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired.” Wait, is Hagrid glad that Ron got to be on the receiving end in the hope that he’ll be less likely to curse people in future? No, of course not, he’s worrying that Ron might otherwise have got in trouble.
* Hagrid comes across as so judgemental when he says “’Spect Lucius Malfoy would’ve come marchin’ up ter school if yeh’d cursed his son.” Clearly, caring about your children being attacked is a sign of great evil. Good guys know that being randomly hexed is what makes a man out of you.
* Although Lucius doesn’t seem to have done much when Draco was hexed into unconsciousness on the train (twice!), which probably foreshadows the Redeemed!Malfoys situation at the end of DH.
* Hagrid’s been breaking the law to make his pumpkins grow faster. Which couldn’t possibly be dangerous in any way, oh no.
* Suddenly, Draco’s gossip about him getting drunk and setting his bed on fire looks awfully plausible.
* Everybody hates Filch, which is entirely understandable, given all the times he complains about having to clean up the mess children make and, erm, gives them detention for breaking the rules. Yep, entirely understandable.
* So how does Parseltongue work, then? ’Cause surely Lockhart ought to have heard it, even if he didn’t understand what it was saying? Or is it a sort of telepathy? But then Ron managed to speak it in DH…
* Awfully convenient the way the basilisk goes around describing its evil plan to itself, isn’t it? Do basilisks just have really bad memories, and need to keep repeating their plans to themselves in case they forget?
* Part of me can’t help but feel pleased that Ron vomited slugs over that trophy. Maybe next time he’ll think twice before hexing someone. Or not.
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Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 02:43 pm (UTC)As bad as what Sirius was trying to do to Severus -- at the very least, severely maim him and possibly be turned into a werewolf, at worst actually get killed -- I don't think people consider how much of an asshole Sirius was being to his allegedly good friend Remus.
As you say, at the very least Remus would have gotten expelled; but if Remus had actually killed Severus, then presumably Remus would have received a death sentence himself.
To me, Sirius' thinking was seriously screwed up -- his attitude towards Severus' well-being as a result of the "prank" to me borders on a DE mindset. But his total disregard for the outcome of his FRIEND to me borders on the psychotic!
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 02:56 pm (UTC)If Sirius wasn't being malicious, then he was just being criminally stupid. If the whole point of the Prank was to protect Remus' secret, well, Sirius did a really lousy job of doing that. If anything, the Prank did far more to endanger Remus than Snape ever did.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 11:54 pm (UTC)I love the way it's 'oh, but Sirius didn't intend to get him killed' and then it segues into victim-blaming by pointing out how Snape is so prejudiced, so even if Sirius did say it on purpose, it was Snape's fault anyway.
Even though his attitude in PoA is very clearly disdainful of Snape and he thinks it's too bad he didn't get killed.
People's ability to excuse the inexcusable is just ridic.
Riiight. And yet people bash me for liking Snape when he's mean to Harry and Neville? Oh, let's not forget that crack he made about Hermione's teeth, obviously the man ought to have been put down by the werewolf for the greater good.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 12:08 am (UTC)I've seen people who vehemently asserted that Snape was a child abuser, but when challenged to provide canon facts to support such an assertion, could only come up with him insulting Hermione's teeth as an example! :-P
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 12:27 am (UTC)And yes, it hardly makes him a child abuser. (The movies BTW piss me off in this regard, when they have him randomly smacking students. Canon Snape DOES NOT GET PHYSICAL with the single exception of Harry in the Pensieve - when he jerks him out by the arm and, depending on how you read the scene, either throws a jar or spontaneously causes a jar sitting on one of the shelves to explode where it sits with an uncontrollable burst of magic. The rest of the time at Hogwarts his weapons are purely verbal.)
I think people can get a little confused between "Harry doesn't like it" and "unacceptable." The first several books do put us very heavily in Harry's POV and the narrative voice usually pushes identification with and approval of him. I wish more people would learn to read criticially. But then again, critical thinking is clearly Slytherin and so not to be trusted.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 12:47 am (UTC)The movies BTW piss me off in this regard, when they have him randomly smacking students
I was just- I kind of snickered at first, 'coz it was a bit funny, but that whole production of pushing up his sleeves and then pushing the boys' heads down- like, what was that supposed to achieve? It wasn't a smack, it wasn't- anything, really! I'm confused! They were going 'oww' but it couldn't have hurt, so I guess it was just for the surprise factor, but still. Yeah. Pointless.
people can get a little confused between "Harry doesn't like it" and "unacceptable."
ITA.
critical thinking is clearly Slytherin and so not to be trusted.
*nodnod* You can't question the text and have your own opinions! You must believe everything Harry, the most unreliable narrator ever, says and believes! Otherwise, the Death Eaters win!
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 01:00 am (UTC)Well, I could be cynical and say let them win, maybe it will actually shake things up a bit.
And word on the not!Moody versus Snape thing. It's supposed to be funny when a Slytherin student is physically abused by a professor, but it's full-scale child abuse when another (Slytherin) professor makes an insulting verbal comment towards a Gryffindor student. Had Snape transfigured Ron and bounced him up and down on a stone floor people would be howling for his blood. And here I thought there was a spectrum of behavior and insulting people, while not nice or good, is generally less bad than physically assaulting them.
Either there's a persistent double standard about cruelty dependent upon whether the recipient is Slytherin or not, or the books have a really, REALLY skewed attitude about the relative terribleness of verbal versus physical attacks. Or both. Though the double standard is there regarding the Dursleys too, so maybe it's just that Harry the Chosen One is the ultimate arbiter of morality, so anything he doesn't like must be evil, and that just encompasses the Slytherins and the Dursleys, while anything he likes - including making people he doesn't like suffer - is automatically good, and it's got nothing to do with the objective nature or effects of an action.
Skewed attitude
Date: 2010-10-28 12:34 am (UTC)See my musings on snapedom:
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/274940.html#cutid1
Re: Skewed attitude
Date: 2010-10-28 08:05 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 01:22 am (UTC)It's not quite as bad as setting someone on fire either - but I do give Hermione a bit of a break there because she was twelve, in a stressful and frightening situation, and did the best she could think of. What worries me is that her general tendency when coming up with ways to get out of such situations repeatedly involves placing someone else in danger, without a thought then *or later* for their safety/human dignity/human rights, and she *never changes* this attitude as she grows up. She becomes quite ruthless: at twelve she's setting teachers on fire; at fifteen she's committing blackmail and holding someone illegally captive (rather than going to an authority figure to deal with it); at sixteen she's scarring people for life and leading people knowingly into physical harm and/or gang rape from a species she knows to be hostile (yes, I understand why, but it's ruthless and later she *laughs* about it); at seventeen she's physically wounding the boy she supposedly loves, so badly it takes weeks for him to heal, out of simple jealousy!
Read Jodel's piece on Hermione here (http://www.redhen-publications.com/Deconstructing.html). I read a fanfic once in which Hermione decides to punish Ginny for cheating on Harry, and it's totally ruthless - but perfectly in character for canon!Hermione, who is doing it for Harry's/The Greater Good and convinced of her righteousness. In the fic you can totally understand and empathize with her real pain on Harry's behalf, but the measures she takes are just chilling. Caveat Inimici (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5508237/1/Caveat_Inimici)
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 05:01 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-28 11:39 pm (UTC)With Hermione, also: over time the mistakes she makes are potentially more costly, and her ability to think creatively and map out the various possibilities of a situation seems to hit a ceiling - Jodel I think has commented on this. With the Rita Skeeter thing after GoF for example - that could have gone badly SO many ways, after she let her out. But did it? No. By all rights it ought to have - Rita's not known for her compassion or random instances of kindness.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 12:32 am (UTC)The comment about her teeth set everyone on edge, but it's the ongoing enmity with Harry and the harshness with Neville that they point to.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 01:59 am (UTC)Nor does he bring up James until the third book, and then to compare Harry's unacceptable behavior with James' own habits of behavior. I don't necessarily think bringing parents into it is really the right way to go, but he's not saying anything that's not true according to what we see of Harry and James, and given the boy's idolization of his father one could be forgiven for thinking that telling him that *James* was mistaken might be a way to get through to him. But of course we must read Severus' actions in the light of the worst possible motivation, so nothing he does or says could possibly be accurate or acceptable - it simply *must* all be due to his thing with James, and not at all, not *once,* the natural frustrations of a teacher dealing with a disrespectful student who openly violates rules and refuses to even try to learn. The Slytherins at least have learned better - they know to keep what they do *behind Severus' back.*
I think a large part of the problem is that (due to a homelife situation Severus had no knowledge of for the first four and a half years, and no objective reason to suspect existed) Harry simply can't distinguish emotionally between valid criticism of his behavior and hatred of him as a person - at least coming from someone he has already taken a dislike to, something we see happen during the Welcoming Feast because of the scar/Quirrelmort connection. Two understandable confusions, but ones that even Harry ought to have started to get his head straight about after a few years of 1) knowing about Quirrelmort and 2) being validated as a hero by the entire WW and having friends, honorary family, and the most respected living wizard supporting him. But Harry also doesn't like or apparently know how to either stand back and analyse his immediate emotional reactions (a big part of his trouble with Occlumency, beyond refusal to practice), or to accept responsibility for his part in situations involving himself and other people. It's very black and white with him, he is always the victim. I wish Harry had actually grown up during the series.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 02:42 am (UTC)I'm a latecomer to the party -- I'd only caught snippets of the movies over the years, but decided to read all the books in 2007 when all the brouhaha over the release of Book 7 overwhelmed the media...
So I have a unique perspective of having first read all 7 books in a row, back-to-back, rather than having to wait years for each new volume. It was only late in 2007 that I started reading the various Potterverse boards.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 01:50 pm (UTC)You have no idea! (LOLs).
June and I have a somewhat similar history in the HP universe. I only got into HP after OOTP book was out. I started reading the series after the first 5 books. I think 6 was getting ready to come out when I started reading 1-5.
I think I saw the first movie and decided to read the first book or it was something like that.
I didn't become a Snape fan till after I had read all the books up to OOTP and got online to read forums and discussion groups.
I think the fans are what drove me to be a Snape fan because I honestly didn't get the hatred fans had of the character so I started getting fussed at for offering ideas and reasoning to Snape's character. Which was apparently a bad thing to do. But it wasn't the movie or even really the books that made me really connect so much as it was people being such assholes about the character. It sort of made me re-read and view the character differently.
Then I happened to buy a little lego set that had Snape in it and on a lark I did a little photo comic called the Adventures of Lego Snape and that lead to be working on a fanfic...so thus I became a Snape fan in the process of all that.
Then a few weeks ago June pointed out deathtocapslock to me and got me into this group. Which is really cool, by the way. I like the thoughtful discussion without the OMG you committed a sin against JKR...how dare you question the HP goddess.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 06:36 am (UTC)Indeed! Same here. I got burned badly by trying to have a rational discussion in other comms, so this is a welcome sanctuary.
Also, lego!Snape! Adorb! ♥ We have so little HP merchandise here, I am disappoint. I was seriously wondering whether to buy this Hermione life-size cut-out thingy, but couldn't be stuffed paying $50 for it. But oh, if there had only been Snape... *iz wistful*
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 02:30 pm (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-30 12:46 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-30 12:59 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
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From:Now we shall talk about Dolls
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From:Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 01:13 pm (UTC)I've seen people who vehemently asserted that Snape was a child abuser, but when challenged to provide canon facts to support such an assertion, could only come up with him insulting Hermione's teeth as an example! :-P
I agree that it was a nasty thing to say to her but that is always used as an example of how evil he is, while ignoring the fact that Hermione was not forever disfigured by the spell.
Why is Hermione overreacting to that situation anyway? Considering she could go to the hospital wing and get her teeth fixed. If Snape really wanted to be evil he could have prevented her from fixing her teeth till after class, It was a nasty insult.
I agree that it was not appropriate for him to say that but in comparison to some of the stunts the 'good' characters do, is it really all that worse than James, or Harry or even Hermione herself. And we know Hermione has publicly humiliated poeple by scaring their forehead with a word.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 06:38 am (UTC)IKR? The double-standards are ridiculous! Oh, let's excuse people for physically attacking others, because that's a-okay, totally acceptable behavior, but a bit of sarcasm, omg, let's get him fired! He's a menace to society! Yeah, considering it was Hermione who masterminded drugging unconscious fellow students and stuffing them in closets, as well as disfiguring another, I'm thinking it's not Snape that's the menace. *eyeroll*
Besides...I really like his snarky remarks. :P
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 02:46 pm (UTC)And yeah, I thought sarcasm was like the bedrock of British society. Flitwick never gets slammed for making his students write "I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick." Yet imagine if Severus made this comment in DADA: "Finnegan! [or student of your choice] Stop waving that thing about and do it properly - are you a wizard, or a baboon brandishing a stick?" Very Severus, yes? But of course he would be hung out to dry for insulting Seamus.
Also, the toad thing. I understand more why people get upset about that, but there is still a similar double standard in play there (you must check out terri's excellent fics on this theme: I (http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/31522.html#cutid1), II (http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/31865.html)). Does anyone ever remember, bring up in discussion, or slam Flitwick over the fact that he zoomed Neville's toad - the same toad - around the classroom as a demonstration? But he did, it's canon. Yet, although that would surely have been terrifying for Trevor and so hell for Neville, Flitwick never gets dinged. Severus on the other hand gets hell for a mere verbal threat, one he knows is not going to be fulfilled (since he left Hermione with Neville after warning him that he would test the potion, and didn't interfere, though he's been happy to break them up before. And the threat of poison only comes after he's seen the finished potion. terri again did the breakdown here.) Not that the threat is a nice thing to do, but then again neither is making the toad fly around the room. And it seems to me that the latter is actually the worse since the toad actually suffers real effects there, whereas the former is just the possibility - Neville alone suffering anxiety seems less bad to me than Neville suffering and Trevor suffering too, objectively. Yet Severus is a monster, and Flitwick gets a complete pass.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 03:10 am (UTC)You know, I bet that the scene of Mrs. Cole telling Dumbledore about how Tom Riddle took Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop to a cave and turned them insane was taken out of context, too. I mean, we never actually saw what happened in the cave either, we just heard about it, so maybe Amy and Dennis were just being jerks and Tom made a snotty side-comment to them. I guess the words just slipped out of his mouth without him realizing it, and they followed him to the cave where something happened and they ended up not quite right afterwards. I think that Tom just had issues with his mom dying on him and maybe Amy and Dennis somehow reminded him of her.
It's strange that I hardly hear that interpretation of Tom's behavior from the HP fandom.
Besides, if his issues of his family were the real reason why Sirius didn't like Snape, then what was *James'* excuse? James didn't have an overbearing, racist mother, at least not from what we've heard. James didn't have the burden of being the only Gryffindor in a family of Slytherins. "Because he exists" is not a valid excuse for me, nor should it be a valid reason for anyone who considers himself or herself to be a rational person.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-27 04:03 am (UTC)